Fatal Discord

by Michael Massing

  Luther denounced the destruction of altars, the burning of images, and the resort to coercion in general. If a monk wanted to leave the cloister, it should be his choice—it should not be forced on him. In the rush for reform, people had grown so angry that they were ready to kill one another. No one had given to the poor or extended a helping hand to others; everyone had instead sought his own advantage. If acts of compulsion did not stop, he said, “I will go without urging; and I dare say that none of my enemies, though they have caused me much sorrow, have wounded me as you have.”

  Luther had skillfully gauged the mood of the people. They were chastened by his words and soothed by his presence, and Wittenberg quickly settled down. “There is great gladness and rejoicing here,” Jerome Schurff reported to Frederick on March 15, 1522, “both among the learned and the unlearned, over Doctor Martin’s return and over the sermons with which, by God’s help, he is daily pointing us poor deluded men back again to the way of truth.” It “is plain as day that the Spirit of God is in him and works through him. . . . Even Gabriel has confessed that he has erred and gone too far.”

  “Gabriel” was Gabriel Zwilling. Back in Wittenberg from Eilenburg, he saw the swift change in the town’s mood and, giving up the stage, retired to a village twelve miles from Wittenberg. Pleased by his submission, Luther remained on good terms with him.

  Not so with Karlstadt. Long exasperated by his mercurial colleague, Luther considered him the principal instigator of the Wittenberg disturbances. What’s more, Karlstadt had preached in the pulpit at the town church—Luther’s pulpit—without the proper authority. Karlstadt was promptly banned from preaching, and in a private meeting Luther warned him not to publish anything against him. Karlstadt nonetheless wrote a sharply worded tract that, while not mentioning Luther, vigorously defended his actions while also reaffirming his trust in the common man. For this he was called before a university committee and censured. Karlstadt was allowed to resume teaching, and after the summer of 1522 he became dean of the theology faculty, but—humiliated at being so rudely treated and convinced he had been made a scapegoat—he awaited an opportunity to strike back.

  In the congregation for the last two of Luther’s sermons was Wolfgang Capito. Still in the service of Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, Capito had come to Wittenberg to seek a reconciliation with Luther. Two months earlier, while still at the Wartburg, Luther had sent him a letter upbraiding him for supporting the archbishop on the sale of indulgences and the persecution of priests who married. Luther had also reproached Capito for urging him to moderate his language. The truth, he declared, had to be spoken “unshackled, pure, and clear.” Despite his close friendship with Erasmus, Capito had long admired Luther and was deeply unsettled by his criticism. Seeing the effect Luther had on his congregation and impressed by his go-slow approach, Capito was even more captivated. Meeting with him afterward, he succeeded in convincing Luther of his good intentions. Disillusioned with his life as a courtier, Capito on his return began considering a new path. Another Erasmian was drifting into the Lutheran camp.

  Never before had the force of Luther’s presence and personality been more on display. To further help Wittenberg regain its footing, he declared a moratorium on change. The traditional Mass was for the time being reinstated. At Easter, Communion was celebrated in one kind, in Latin, and with the usual rituals (although a reformed service was held for those who wanted it). Order was restored at the university and enrollment began to rise again. Luther resumed living in the emptying Augustinian monastery. Within its walls, he occasionally wore lay clothing, but in public he continued to appear in his cowl so as to project a sense of normalcy.

  Luther’s putting a brake on change was understandable in light of the violence that had broken out. Had the rapid pace of reform continued, the destruction of property that had occurred might well have led to the loss of life. Yet the reforms had been very popular, filling the churches and giving the laity a sense of participation in rites that had previously been reserved for the priesthood. Not only Karlstadt and Zwilling but also Melanchthon, Jonas, and many other prominent citizens, including the town council itself, had supported the changes. Luther now quashed all that. Reform—of not only rites and doctrine but also education, welfare, and social life in general—was to be instituted gradually and directed by Luther working closely with the authorities.

  As a result of Luther’s opposition to compulsion, Wittenberg would never develop the type of absolutist regime that Calvin was to impose in Geneva, with conduct closely monitored and morals strictly regulated. At the same time, Luther’s fear of the mob and distrust of spontaneous action would result in a turning away from the principles of popular participation and communal purpose that were to arise elsewhere as the Reformation spread. In the Lutheran church, reform was to be more an individual than a collective affair; each Christian would have to find his or her own pathway to God.

  Luther’s caution, however, reflected not just his conservative instincts but also the grave danger he faced. Though both the papal bull and the imperial edict had proved difficult to enforce, Luther remained an outlaw. In late March 1522, a new diet opened in Nuremberg, and as the news spread that Luther was back in Wittenberg, there was much indignation. “I must warn your Grace,” Duke George wrote to his cousin Frederick, “that I have recently seen a letter in which it is said that Martin is in Wittenberg and is preaching publicly, though he is under the ban of the Pope and the Empire. Your Grace must beware that this does not become a cause of offense to God and the world, for, however sweetly he may speak, he still has a scorpion’s tail.”

  The seriousness of the situation was driven home by the arrival in Wittenberg that spring of Jacob Probst. Probst had been serving as the prior of the Augustinian friary in Antwerp. A stronghold of Lutheran beliefs, it had become the central target of a ruthless campaign against dissent in the Low Countries. In contrast to Germany, where Charles V had little authority, in this region he had a great deal, and he was determined to crush the reform movement before it took root. Impressed with the success of the Spanish Inquisition in stamping out heresy, the emperor had ordered the establishment of a similar apparatus in the Low Countries. The Netherlands Inquisition would become the most active such operation north of the Alps. Probst (who had studied in Wittenberg) was among the first seized. Taken in Antwerp, he was transferred to Brussels and brutally interrogated; after recanting, he was spared. Sent to the Augustinian monastery in Ypres, he soon repudiated his recantation and was rearrested. Execution seemed certain, but a fellow monk helped him escape, and he fled to Wittenberg.

  Soon, other Lutherans in the Low Countries were being detained, and it seemed only a matter of time before the movement had its first martyrs. “The whole Rhine is bloody,” Luther wrote, recalling the fate of Jan Hus. By shedding innocent blood, the princes were hastening their own destruction. “They are planning to burn me, too, at the stake, but I am constantly provoking Satan and his scales all the more.”

  Despite such peril, Luther refused to restrain his pen. He mocked Duke George as a Wasserblase (“water bubble” or “bladder”) “who defies heaven with his lofty paunch” and who, denying the gospel, “is destroying many souls.” If the princes continued to listen to the “dull-witted” duke, there would be an uprising that would “destroy the princes and rulers of all Germany.” Luther’s letter quickly became public, driving Duke George into a froth. Frederick as usual took no action, but even had he wanted to act, he would have been constrained by the aroused state of the population.

  In addition to these outside threats, Luther had to contend with realities on the ground. Essentially, the Roman Church had disappeared from Wittenberg, and Luther was now its pope. A new order had to be built, and a hundred questions pressed in. With priestly ordination abandoned, who would preach and minister to the people? Who would train pastors, and how would they be paid? What should the order of the church service be? Should it be conducted in Latin or German? Should
Communion be in both kinds or just one? Should confession be retained, and if so, in what form?

  Luther was overwhelmed with requests for assistance and counsel. The town of Leisnig wrote for advice in setting up a common chest like the one in Wittenberg. The residents of Kemberg asked for help in getting the badly rutted road to Wittenberg paved. When a fisherman was caught poaching in Frederick’s waters and ordered to pay a fine of six hundred pieces of silver, Luther pleaded with the elector to instead impose a brief jail sentence or, alternatively, to require the man to live on bread and water for eight days, “so that people may see that the purpose is to reform and not destroy the man.” With runaway monks and fugitive priests arriving in Wittenberg, Luther put many up in the vacated cells at the Black Cloister, even though he suspected they were acting “for the sake of the belly and of carnal liberty.”

  Most taxing of all was the issue of marriage. With ecclesiastical authority over this institution collapsing, Luther was besieged by couples and families contending over engagements and vows, abandonment and betrayal. “How I dread preaching on the estate of marriage!” he declared in the opening sentence of a pamphlet on that subject that he would write later in the year. Nonetheless, he celebrated the new freedom people were enjoying in this area. “Away with this foolishness,” he wrote. “Take as your spouse whomsoever you please, whether it be godparent, godchild, or the daughter or sister of a sponsor, and disregard these artificial money-seeking impediments” imposed by the Church. After centuries of strict clerical controls on marriage, people were leaving unsuitable partners and fleeing lifeless unions, and they looked to the abstinent Augustinian to guide them.

  In dealing with all these matters, Luther had a small circle on which to rely. Jerome Schurff offered legal advice and Nikolaus von Amsdorf helped in rebutting polemical attacks. Justus Jonas, in addition to teaching canon law at the university, held the strategic post of provost at the Castle Church. Most of the two dozen or so clerics there continued to say Masses for the dead; in the coming months, Jonas would work closely with Luther in figuring out how to deal with them.

  A recent addition was Johannes Bugenhagen. A tall, tough-minded native of Pomerania on the southern shores of the Baltic, Bugenhagen had (like Jonas) begun as a humanist committed to Erasmian-style moral improvement. On reading The Babylonian Captivity, he had initially felt shock at Luther’s audacity and considered him the greatest heretic, but, on examining it more closely, he had come to believe that, in a world groping in blindness, this man “alone sees the truth.” In the spring of 1521, Bugenhagen moved to Wittenberg and began lecturing on the Psalms, to great acclaim, and Luther, on his return from the Wartburg, was likewise impressed. “Next to Philipp he is the best professor of theology in the world,” he wrote to Spalatin. Bugenhagen was also adept at dealing with the laity, and in the autumn of 1523 Luther would arrange for his appointment as pastor at the town church. Bugenhagen would eventually become Luther’s father confessor, replacing Johann von Staupitz as the person to whom he would turn when his spiritual burdens became too great.

  But Bugenhagen most excelled where Luther most fell short—in organizational skills. After the disturbances of 1522, he would be instrumental in rebuilding the church in Wittenberg, and from 1525 on he would frequently be away in northern cities, helping to set up reform churches. The rapid success of the Reformation in northern Germany and Scandinavia was due in part to Bugenhagen’s organizing work, which earned him the description “Reformer of the North.”

  Finally, and most important, there was Melanchthon. As always, his relations with Luther remained close—and strained. Melanchthon’s bumbling performance during the Wittenberg disturbances had shaken his mentor’s confidence in him. Nonetheless, the two would frequently collaborate after Luther’s return, especially on the translation of the New Testament. The manuscript Luther had completed at the Wartburg in a mere eleven weeks was rushed and unpolished, and in revising it he relied heavily on Melanchthon’s knowledge of Greek and Latin. He also enlisted Spalatin. Spalatin had translated several of Luther’s works into German, but Luther now urged him “to give us simple terms” rather than those used at court, “for this book must be adorned with simplicity.” As an initial assignment, he asked Spalatin to provide the names and colors of the gems mentioned in Revelation 21, or “better yet, get them from the court, or wherever else you can, and let us have the opportunity to see them.”

  Luther hoped to have the translation ready for the autumn fair in Leipzig, due to begin on September 29, 1522. Having lost faith in the ability of Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, he entrusted the job to Melchior Lotther. The substantial capital needed for this project was supplied by Christian Döring, the local goldsmith and innkeeper who had provided the carriage for Luther’s journey to Worms; the large quantities of paper required were supplied by Lucas Cranach, who owned a paper mill. The typesetting began in early May. Word of the printing was limited to Luther’s closest friends for fear that the sheets would be stolen and printed elsewhere.

  When he was not revising and writing, Luther was often preaching. (For the time being he was not allowed to lecture at the university lest this be seen as a deliberate flouting of the imperial edict.) Congregants frequently took notes on his sermons, and, after reconstructing them, offered them to printers, who were eager to bring them out. “Everywhere people are thirsting for the gospel,” Luther exulted to Spalatin. “From all sides they are asking us for preachers.” Congregations, tiring of hearing priests exalt the Virgin and the saints, hungered for men fluent in the new gospel of faith and grace, and pulpit wars broke out between Romanist and Lutheran preachers.

  To both promote his ideas and help calm the masses, Luther decided to go on a preaching tour, leaving Wittenberg sometime after Easter 1522. Because his journey took him through the territory of Duke George, he traveled in secular clothing, and at least once he had to ride on horseback at night, but no move was made against him. Over two weeks he would preach eleven times, and everywhere the reception was rapturous. In Zwickau, the site of the restless weavers, the turnout far exceeded the capacity of the cathedral, so Luther had to preach a second time from a window in the town hall and a third time at the castle. At every stop, he urged patience. The old Roman rites had to go and new ones had to be created in their place, but only gradually, so that the weak and resistant could be brought along. A Christian could be justified only by faith, but this did not mean that works of love were unimportant. Again and again, Luther affirmed that all believers are priests, but he warned that no one should act on this idea on his own except to comfort others in a brotherly spirit.

  Through such preaching, Luther helped restore the peace in most places. One exception was Altenburg, located south of Leipzig. Earlier, its town council had dismissed the Catholic preacher, and Luther, asked to recommend a replacement, had suggested Gabriel Zwilling. In a letter informing the former firebrand of the appointment, Luther urged him to be moderate and to give up the broad-brimmed hat he had taken to wearing. In a trial sermon, Zwilling impressed the congregation, which pushed for his appointment, but old-guard clerics, still loyal to Rome, insisted on reserving the right to name the preacher. On his visit, Luther pressed Zwilling’s case, but the issue remained deadlocked. Eventually, Frederick—unwilling to overlook Zwilling’s part in the Wittenberg disturbances—rejected his candidacy. As a compromise, the electoral court proposed Wenceslas Link, who had recently resigned as head of the German Augustinians. He accepted the post and assumed it in the summer of 1522, temporarily defusing the situation.

  But the issue would not go away. In communities large and small, congregations were demanding the right to name their pastors—part of the popular surge across Saxony and beyond as people responded to Luther’s call to Christians to read and interpret the Bible for themselves.

  Back in Wittenberg, Luther saw a new collection of letters by Erasmus. Titled Epistolae ad Diversos, it had gone on sale at the 1522 spring fair in Frankfurt, and scholar
s and clerics across Europe were eagerly reading it to see what the famous scholar had to say on the great controversies of the day. Luther found much to dislike. Along with Erasmus’s pokes at pedantic philosophers and narrow-minded friars were ardent expressions of loyalty to Rome and large helpings of scorn for the reformers. The volume contained Erasmus’s statement “Christ I recognize, Luther I know not,” as well as his remarkable admission that he had pressed Froben to stop publishing Luther. In a letter to William Warham, the archbishop of Canterbury, Erasmus wrote of his plan to read through the writings of both Luther and Luther’s opponents with the goal of “doing all I can to support the dignity of the Roman pontiff and the peace of Christendom.”

  For months, rumors had been circulating that Erasmus was preparing to attack Luther, and this seemed to confirm them. To Spalatin, Luther complained that it was better to have an open enemy like Eck than a covert one like Erasmus who posed as a friend—an odd statement, given Erasmus’s repeated statements that he was no friend of Luther’s. Deciding to make a preemptive strike, Luther in late May 1522 drafted a letter to an anonymous addressee in which he derided Erasmus, singling out his failure to understand the true nature of predestination. “Erasmus is not to be feared either in this or in almost any other important subject that pertains to Christian doctrine.” If he “casts the die, he will see that Christ fears neither the gates of hell nor the power of the air. I know what is in this man just as I know the plots of Satan; but I expect him to reveal more clearly from day to day what grudge he nurses against me.” Luther’s letter was promptly leaked and brought to Erasmus’s attention.